May 23, 2008

•  Research focused on triggering anti-HIV immunity

•  UAB’s B-cell work builds on T-cell knowledge

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.– A University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researcher has been awarded a $275,000 grant to advance the ongoing search for an effective vaccine against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Harry W. Schroeder, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine in the UAB Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, was chosen by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the funding. Schroeder is among those working to speed the development of an HIV vaccine based on a greater understanding of a type of white blood cell called the B cell.

Schroeder will use the $275,000 to study ways that enable him and other scientists to outwit HIV through immunity pathways. One promising pathway is stimulating the B-cell production of protective antibodies that can neutralize many strains of the virus. Schroeder’s lab is using genetically engineered mice to see if such protective antibodies can be generated more quickly and pooled in the blood to fight HIV.

“If we can figure out a way to permit these types of antibodies to remain in the system, at least during the time of immunization, it may be possible to create an effective HIV vaccine,” Schroeder said.

THE PROMISE OF 2 CELL TYPES

In recent years, grants supported by NIAID have focused more heavily on T-cell based approaches to HIV vaccines. While B cells make antibodies that target and remove dangerous microbes, T cells kill cells infected by those microbes. Many experts now believe a successful HIV vaccine will need to activate both T cells and B cells.

The UAB grant and nine others are part of NIAID’s overall $15.6 million new program to advance underdeveloped approaches to finding an HIV vaccine.

"The study of B cells and broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV will answer pressing, basic scientific questions and bring greater balance to our portfolio of HIV vaccine discovery research,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.

Each grantee's combined expertise in basic immunology and HIV infection reflects the program's collaborative roots between NIAID's Division of AIDS and its Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation, Fauci said.

The other NIAID grants went to B-cell researchers at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, University of California, Irvine, University of Florida in Gainesville, Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, University of Rochester in New York and the University of Colorado at Denver.